Time In

I’ve become rather lazy with blogging recently, a whole month since I last posted and a low rate of posting for several months now. Partly because the day-job work-load has become focussed and intense, so I feel more guilty just browsing and commenting in the blogosphere, partly because the smaller trivial titbits fit more directly into Facebook bypassing the blog entirely, and partly because even when I see interesting things to comment on, they seem to be repeating messages I’ve already done to death (in my mind at least).

As, I’ve said before I need to switch from browse and comment mode into new creative writing mode, it’s just that the day-job-project is consuming most brain cells for the foreseeable year or two, and needs must.

I keep an eye on Johnny Moore, who links most of his blog posts via Twitter to Facebook and /or LinkedIn. Johnny is moving the core of his business-consulting subject area closer to psychology, and even taking in Buddhism and “non-rational” thinking sources. I identify with so much of his link-collecting and commentary. In that sense, he’s part of the “repetition” – the nothing new under the sun – that’s caused me to tire of posting such things, but he is maintaining a great and growing collection of relevant links and anecdotes. Someone has to do it. Thanks Johnnie.

Talking of balancing time between day-job and other “projects” here is one example link from Johnny. I think I may be stuck with “Time In”.

And this creepy “I am not a number” plea, is a reaction to the relentless objectification of quality. So well established – nothing new under the sun – that the old Oscar Wilde quote “a cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing” remains hard to improve upon as a distinction between (objective/rational) price and (subjective/psychological) value. Graven images – religiously cast in stone tablets – the epitome of mis-placed objectification.

Even this link to Susan Weinschenk leads to the conclusion that even serious academic psychology basically reinforces folk-psychology. The science of brain functioning will be complete when we can agree reality IS folk psychology. Reality is already clear, it’s just the rationalizing process of evidence and argumentation that lags behind. Qu’elle surprise.

Real life’s a game and the game is called psychology – game theory in practice.

Anyway, talking of Johnnies, to change the subject, saw John (Johnny Rotten) Lydon last week with PIL at Rockefeller in Oslo. Greatly exceeded expectations – keeping it real with real passion, a real eccentric connection with the audience and real quality musicians in the band. Best gig for a couple of years, and I’ve seen quite a few – busy obtaining the overlooked back collection in MP3’s.

Go Johnny Go. Go, Johnny B Goode.

PS – Also read Mark Radcliffe’s “Reeling in the Years“. Mark’s 2 years younger than me, but his musical journey through life hits so many of the same spots as mine – the full text that is, not just the chapter head-liners. Mark (he’s a drummer as well as a DJ / Musicographer) told the same Coldplay drummer anecdote back-stage at Glastonbury that appears in his book.

Q. Since you don’t actually own a drumkit, how do you practice drumming ?
A. With 200 gigs a year, how hard can it be ?

Information Socially Corrupted

Another story indicating that socially shared information is not necessarily good information. Tweeted by Dave Gurteen on LinkedIn, this Wired Science story based on this National Academy of Sciences paper.

Good also that it acknowledges the misnomer in the “wisdom”of crowds having nothing whatsoever to do with wisdom, more a matter of objective statistical accuracy in aggregated subjective judgements. BUT, crucially the statistics are broken if the crowd shares what it knows before judging – then all you have is a meme, information of dubious quality that just happens to be easy to spread. Easy crowds out good.

Social sharing of information is not necessarily a good thing.

Never Say Never

Irrelevant to the Bin Laden context I reckon, but a worthwhile piece from Baggini on the idea of torture being an absolute no-no as some matter of principle. Of course like all rules, it’s the exceptions we need to be talking about – the old adage that “Rules are for the guidance of wise men and the enslavement of fools.” That and making the distinction between thought experiments and their value in a real world situation, where the decision-maker must live with the consequences.

The paradox that yes, even absolute rules have exceptions.

The truth in “never say never” is that there are no exceptionless rules. But that does not mean there are no rules. Rules matter and to be rules they need to be universal in form: always do this, never do that. But it is foolish to rule out in advance the possibility that an occasion might arise when normal rules just don’t apply. Rules are not there to be broken, but sometimes break them we must.

Foolish = for fools – right?
Breaking rules = something wise people must do.
The more absolute the rule the greater the wisdom needed.

Some good stuff in Baggini’s piece – like even the excluded middle between a binary choice is not just another single third choice, they come in many potential varieties.

These responses ” yes, no and it’s a bad question so I won’t answer ” seem to exhaust the options. But I think there is a fourth option: yes and no, a contradiction that makes as much sense as “never say never”.

(PS – I recall that Harvard Law public lecture series on escalating otherwise very simple moral dilemmas …. must dig up the link.)

Farenheit Quality

Read the 5oth anniversary edition of Ray Bradbury’s 1953 “Farenheit 451” the other day and noticed this passage:

There is nothing magical in [books] at all. The magic is in what [they] say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us. Of course you couldn’t know this, you still can’t understand what I mean when I say this. You are intuitively right, that’s what counts. Three things are missing:

Number One: Do you know why books such as this are so important ? Because they have quality.

And what does quality mean ? To me it is texture. The book has pores. It has features. The book can go under the microscope. You’d find life streaming past in infinite profusion. […]

Number Two: The leisure [time & space] to digest it.

Number Three: The right [ freedom] to carry out actions based on the interaction of the first two.

Intelligent File Naming

A nice one from Dilbert yesterday:
Dilbert.com

Templeton for Martin Rees

The usual furore when Templeton awards its £1m dollar prize to a prominent scientist. This time it’s Martin Rees.

As usual I think this “Quisling” remark says more about Dawkins than anything.

Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist and one of the most high-profile scientists in the aggressively pro-science, anti-religion ‘new atheist’ movement, once called Rees a “compliant Quisling” for accepting Templeton sponsorship of a lecture series when he was head of the Royal Society.

This is the reality, “publicity machine” basically.
Unlike constructive debate, polarization sells.
Just my previous post was on those excluded middles between polar opposites.

Denis Alexander, director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion at the University of Cambridge, UK, welcomed Rees’s award and said that although “people who want to keep a very sharp demarcation” between science and religion are highly vocal, they are few in number. “The media tend to thrive on conflict so these loud voices in favour of a polarized debate tend to get heard quite often,” he says. Carroll agrees that Templeton Prize controversy has now become something of an annual event. “It’s a publicity machine and it works very well. Every year I get a phone call like this,” he says.

Excluded Middles

If there are two competing versions of the truth, almost certainly neither is true. David Mitchell soap-box piece from Guardian Comment is Free.

Grayling Heads the BHA

Good to see Anthony Grayling appointed president of the BHA (British Humanist Association).

He may not be my favourite philosopher, but he is streets ahead of Dawkins when it comes to understanding the arguments.

For the first time, I see I am not alone in seeing Dawkins as part of the problem. Andris Rudzitis and Matthew Byrd on Facebook.

I both agree and disagree with what he/you have to say! I agree that Dawkins isn’t equipped to deal with the enormous intellects of people like Keith ward, maybe even Alister McGrath but certainly Rowan Williams,and that his philosophy and knowledge of religion aren’t great but the fact remains that most theists aren’t this clever anyway. People like Hitchens and Dawkins, despite not being experts in disentangling the most erudite and complex arguments are more than capable at destroying the arguments of the run-of-the-mill theist. Yes, this is partly due to those arguments being weak – argument from design, pascal’s wager, argument from miracles etc. but also because these arguments are often more in the sphere of science (Dawkins) or sociology and politics (Hitchens) What Dawkins brings is his great desire to change peoples’ views, enough intellect to justify doing so, and the position in academia and society in order to do so.

You also have to bear in mind that a lot of Dawkins’ thought and writing engages the effect of religion on society – you don’t necessarily have to be a great philosopher to support these arguments. Finally, as I said earlier, a LOT of peoples’ reasons for theism are reasons which are best answered by science – design argument etc. In this regard, who better to challenge them then someone who was Oxford Professor for the Public Understanding of Science!?

Yes, Dawkins may be naive is he thinks that science can be used to respond to all claims of theism – but he isn’t wrong that it should be used to challenge a LOT of the arguments that are used – even if these are the more basic ones.

I personally set the other three “horsemen” (Hitchens, Harris and Dennett) quite apart from Dawkins in this respect, but a good balanced view IMHO. Ditto McGrath, but good to see another atheist recognise the qualities of  the Archbishop, Rowan Williams. The problem for me has always been the presumed monopoly of science when it comes to reason – and Dawkins has shown little else in his kitbag. (The odd glimpse, maybe.)

The other interesting point in that view from Andris, is the emphasis on “destroying” the arguments of others. We’ve reached a point where constructive dialogue requires mutual trust to make constructive progress. Again a recurring theme here, as recently as the previous post.

[Post Note: This lecture by Sam Harris has an excellent 2 minute intro – that incidentally points out that Richard Dawson (sic) is simply no longer relevant.]

[PS – Facebook is a very closed channel; I can’t link in to a specific group or discussion from outside. Beware Facebook, it wants your eyes locked-in to its own advertising sales model. LinkedIn is almost as bad.]

Bandwidth of Trust

Seems I’m not alone. Karl-Erik Sveiby, founding father of knowledge management, says:

Trust is the bandwidth of communication.

I like that. Thanks to David Gurteen for the link.

Interestingly, Sveiby also records aboriginal Tex Skuthorpe (in Treading Lightly) saying:

We don’t have a word for [knowledge].

Our land is our knowledge, we walk on the knowledge, we dwell in the knowledge, we live in our thesauras, we walk in our bible every day of our lives. Everything is knowledge.

We don’t need a word for knowledge, I guess.

The story owns the storyteller, not the other way around.

The roots are direct lived experience, dare I say “pre-intellectual participation” and custodianship.

Are They Mad ?

Shock, horror – Top Gear drove car aggressively during track test ?!? I actually thought the Tesla came out really (really) well in that test, absolutely no surprise the practical economics and reliability couldn’t stand that kind of thrashing, but it was actually possible to thrash it. How dumb do Tesla believe the market is ? I seriously researched one as a result. At least Clarkson didn’t attach an outboard motor and sink it or let Hammond launch it off a ski-jump.

Talking of energy, was there ever any doubt over Tepco writing-off the Fukushima plants the day they chose to turn the salt-water cooling hoses on them ?

And, still talking of energy, I see the Oil&Gas Co’s are reviewing UK North Sea investment project economics following last week’s UK budget. Yes, the cost changes affect the project economics, but I love this remark

“… the new combined tax rate faced by Statoil would be 62% of its UK profits, compared with a rate of 78% levied by the Norwegian government in its home market.”